1. Field of the Invention
Conventionally, what is known as a "daisy chain" system is used, in a multi-processor system, to control or manage the order of priority of interruption demands or requests and/or use demands or requests on a system bus. Such a daisy chain type of multi-processor system includes a plurality of processors and has one input line and one output line provided for each processor for transmitting the requests to the respective processors. The output of each processor is connected to the input of the following processor.
2. Description of Related Art
A daisy chain type of multi-processor system includes a plurality of processors B1, B2, B3, . . . , as is represented in FIG. 1, and typically manages or controls the order of priority in which access to a bus is acquired in such a way that if there are interruption requests raised simultaneously on a plurality of the processors, priority over other processors for bus acquisition is given to a processor closer to bus acknowledge (Bus ACK) in order to eliminate bus acquisition (Bus ACQ) conflicts among the processors. A daisy chain multi-processor system of this type has a functional disadvantage in that the processors having lower orders of priority of bus acquisition are very slow in acquiring access to the bus. Also, such a system has an architectural drawback in that the design of software for eliminating the occurrence of conflicting bus assignments is complicated.